1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a vehicle front portion structure and particularly relates to a structure where a reinforcing member is disposed on the lower portion of a front pillar.
2. Related Art
In the side portion vehicle body structure for a vehicle described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open (JP-A) No. 2013-001226, a side sill that extends in the vehicle front and rear direction is equipped with a side sill reinforcement, and a gusset member is disposed on the front end portion of the side sill reinforcement. Furthermore, a front pillar reinforcement is disposed on the lower portion of a lower side front pillar that extends upward from the front end portion of the side sill, and a first reinforcing member (inside reinforcing member) is disposed in the corner portion between the lower side front pillar and the side sill. Moreover, the lower side region of the front end portion of the bottom wall portion of the side sill reinforcement and the front side region of the lower end portion of the of the front wall portion of the front pillar reinforcement are coupled to one another by a second reinforcing member (outside reinforcing member).
In this structure, when the load of a frontal crash has been input to the lower side front pillar, the first reinforcing member acts in such a way as to counter the compressive force and the second reinforcing member acts in such a way as to counter the tensile force. This keeps the lower side front pillar from collapsing backward and controls deformation of the vehicle body at the door opening.
However, in a structure such as the one described above, when the load of a frontal crash has been input to the lower side front pillar, the lower side front pillar becomes locally deformed in the vicinity of the upper end of the front pillar reinforcement, and thus there is the potential for a moment trying to collapse the lower side front pillar backward to occur. As a result, when the side sill reinforcement (rocker reinforcement) becomes bent in the vicinity of the rear end of the gusset member, the deformation of the vehicle body at the door opening ends up increasing, so there is room for improvement in terms of controlling deformation of the cabin.